sweeping satire on his countrymen. In the first scene of the fourth act there is a curious

passage which has no point unless we suppose that it is directed against some particular courtier:

“1st Gent. I ken the man weel; he’s one of my thirty pound knights.

“2d Gent. No, no, this is he that stole his knighthood o’ the grand day for four pound given to a page; all the money in’s purse, I wot well.”

Satirical references to King James’ knights, the men who purchased knighthood from the king, are as common as blackberries; but in the present passage there must be a covert allusion to some person who procured the honour by an unworthy artifice, and I suspect that the allusion is to Sir James Murray. It is surprising that, when the reflections on the Scots were expunged, the passage in iv. 1 was allowed to stand; for, whether Sir James Murray was or was not personally ridiculed, the mimicry of James’ Scotch accent is unmistakeable. Perhaps the king joined in the laugh against himself, when the play was acted before him by the Lady Elizabeth’s Servants at Whitehall on 25th January 1613-4 (Cunningham’s Extracts from the Account of the Revels, p. xliv.).

Of the merits of Eastward Ho it would be difficult to speak too highly. To any who are in need of a pill to purge melancholy this racy old comedy may be safely commended. Few readers, after once making his acquaintance, will forget Master Touchstone, the honest shrewd old goldsmith, rough of speech at times but ever gentle at heart, thrifty to outward show but bountiful as the sun in May: he lives in our affections with Orlando

Friscobaldo and Simon Eyre. Quicksilver, the rowdy prentice, dazed from last night’s debauch, reciting in a thick voice stale scraps of Jeronymo as he reels about Master Touchstone’s shop, heedless of the maxims of temperance which frown in print from the walls; Golding, the well-conducted prentice, the apple of his master’s eye, armed at all points with virtue and sobriety; Gertrude, the goldsmith’s extravagant daughter, with her magnificent visions of coaches, and castles, and cherries at an angel a pound; Mildred, her sister, simple and dutiful; Mistress Touchstone, who has been infected with Gertrude’s vanity, but quickly learns penitence in the school of necessity; Sir Petronel Flash, the shifty knight, eager to escape from creditors and serjeants to the new-found land of Virginia; Security, the blood-sucker and egregious gull:—all these characters, and the list is not exhausted, stand limned in all the warmth of life. Mr. Swinburne, in his masterly essay on Chapman, says with truth that “in no play of the time do we get such a true taste of the old city life so often turned to mere ridicule by playwrights of less good humour, or feel about us such a familiar air of ancient London as blows through every scene.”

It is very certain that Marston could never have written single-handed so rich and genial a play. In all Marston’s comedies there is a strong alloy of bitterness; we are never allowed to rise from the comic feast with a pleasant taste in the mouth. What precise share Marston had in Eastward Ho it would be difficult to determine with any approach to certainty. In the

very first scene (vol. iii. p. 8) we come across a passage which is distinctly in Marston’s manner:—

“I am entertained among gallants, true; they call me cousin Frank, right; I lend them monies, good; they spend it well.”

Compare a passage of The Fawn (vol. ii. p. 181):—

“His brother your husband, right; he cuckold his eldest brother, true; he get her with child, just.”

But in the same opening scene there are equally unmistakable signs of Jonson’s presence. Touchstone says of Golding:—“He is a gentleman, though my prentice ...; well friended, well parted.” The curious expression “well parted” will be at once recognised as Jonsonian by the vigilant reader, who will remember how Macilente, in “The Characters of the Persons” prefixed to Every Man out of his Humour,[21] is described as “A man well parted, a sufficient scholar,” &c. Jonson and Marston worked on the first scene together; and it seems to me that throughout the first two acts we have the mixed work of these two writers. In the second scene of the third act, as Mr. Swinburne notices, Chapman’s hand is clearly seen in the quaint allusion to “the ship of famous Draco.” Quicksilver’s moralising, in iv. 1, after he has scrambled ashore at Wapping on the night of the drunken shipwreck, is again in Chapman’s manner; but his elaborate devices for blanching copper and sweating angels (later in the

same scene) must, without the shadow of a doubt, be ascribed to the invention of the author of The Alchemist. It would be of doubtful advantage to pursue the inquiry at length.

Eastward Ho was revived at Drury Lane on Lord Mayor’s day 1751, under the title of The Prentices (n. d. 12mo), and again in 1775 under the title of Old City Manners. Hogarth is said to have drawn from Eastward Ho the plan of his prints The Industrious and Idle Prentices. Nahum Tate’s farce Cuckold’s Haven, published in 1685, is drawn partly from Eastward Ho and partly from The Devil is an Ass.

Parasitaster, or the Fawn, published in 1606, takes us again to Italy, and once more we have to listen to a satirical exposure of the courtiers’ vices and follies. In spite of occasional tediousness the play is interesting. Dulcimel, Gonzago’s witty daughter, who gulls her self-conceited old father by a pretended discovery of Tiberio’s love for her, and succeeds by her blandishments in converting the young misogynist into a perfervid wooer, is a delightfully attractive heroine. The stratagem employed by Dulcimel is of ancient date: it is found in Terence’s Adelphi, Boccaccio’s Decameron (third tale of the third day), and Molière’s L’École des Maris. I am half inclined to suspect that Marston was slily glancing at the “wise fool” King James in the person of the silly and pedantic Gonzago; and it is probable that some social scandals of the time afforded material for the description of the intrigues of Gonzago’s courtiers. Granuffo, who gains a reputation for wisdom

by never opening his mouth, might possibly be made an amusing character by an actor skilled in facial contortions; but the humour of the thing is not very apparent in print. Signior No in the Noble Spanish Soldier (attributed to Samuel Rowley, though the play may properly belong to Dekker), and Littleword in Nabbes’ Covent Garden, are somewhat similar characters. The address To the Equal Reader, prefixed to Parasitaster, is excellently written, and exhibits Marston in a very pleasant light. “For mine own interest for once,” he writes, with a frankness which is not without a touch of pathos, “let this be printed,—that of men of my own addiction I love most, pity some, hate none; for let me truly say it, I once only loved myself, for loving them, and surely I shall ever rest so constant to my first affection, that let their ungentle combinings, discourteous whisperings, never so